The puppets in Little Angel Theatre's A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings are
breathtaking, writes Daisy Bowie-Sell.

In this adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1968 fable, astonished villagers call the creature which arrives on the shores of their fishing port both an angel and a giant chicken. Neither description is right. The 'thing' that falls to earth is simply a very old man with enormous wings.

This encapsulates one of the main aspects of Marquez’s tale that most lends itself to puppetry: its magical realism. Strange, wondrous things happen and people have to react to them as they would to any day-to-day conundrum. The Little Angel company, founded by Lyndie Wright and John Wright, parents of the director Joe Wright, have created a host of evocative and fantastical puppets.

The most breathtaking is the central character with his enormous wings. He’s a thin, scrawly, grey giant with black wings that shimmer and rustle at the slightest movement. His entrance, in a loud, crashing storm is terrifying, as he looms out of the dark sky, whooshing and swooping through the clouds.

He crash lands into a rain-lashed poverty-stricken village which has been overrun by crabs. When the villagers discover him, they also find that the crabs have miraculously disappeared, and that a sick boy has been cured.

At first they are terrified, but they realise he might be an angel, and are quick to take advantage. He is locked up in a chicken coop, fed scraps and the young cured boy’s family (the man fell into their back yard) charge for people to touch him. Included in the characters, all made by Lyndie Wright and Sarah Wright, are a Mary Poppins-esque priest who flies in with his umbrella to prove this is not an angel; a man who is kept awake at night by the noise of the stars and a man who can only walk sideways after eating too much crab.

Little Angel, directed by Kneehigh’s Mike Shepherd, have made this a moral tale: the villager’s frenzied attempts to make money from their sideshow climaxes and eventually the villagers learn from their mistake.

The show is a little too long at an hour and a half, and pads out moments where nothing really happens, but the puppets are a joy to watch. The expert puppeteers carefully and cleverly manipulate them so that each tiny movement expresses as much, if not more, than the words.

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings plays at Battersea Arts Centre until 19 Jan and then tours until March 10. See www.littleangeltheatre.com